Mexico City former mayor breaks with leftist PRD party

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Former Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said Friday he is splitting with the country's leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, citing what he described as its increasing closeness to President Enrique Pena Nieto and the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party.

In his resignation letter, a copy of which he made public on Twitter, Ebrard wrote that he was a loyal PRD member for 10 years but its current direction "is incompatible with the objectives and political duties of the Mexican left."

Ebrard joins a string of other prominent figures to part ways with the PRD, including Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Alejandro Encinas, all of whom were also former Mexico City mayors.

Ebrard has clashed with an ascendant PRD faction known as the New Left, and last week he was denied a party nomination for legislative elections in June.